Meeting of Minds

 

In this month’s issue of Catskill/Cairo magazine is an article about Common Ground, an organization that specializes in mediation. As an example of how it works, they present a California case between two neighbors of different cultures and languages. Neither spoke much English. The woman, a Hmong from Southeast Asia, owned a flock of chickens. The man, from Mexico, was accused of stealing one of the flock.

 The woman became frantic and demanded that he return the chicken or pay her $3000. The man didn’t have $3000, nor could he return the chicken because it had been served at a family barbecue.

The mediator didn’t speak much of either language, but managed to elicit the fact that the woman had recently lost a son. The man asked, “Did the chicken belong to your son?”

The woman, whose religion espoused reincarnation, claimed the chicken was her son. The man, at last understood what the situation meant to her, apologized most profoundly, and promised to take the place of that son. She, in turn, was able to grasp his lack of awareness and to accept the apology. We’ll assume he still had to make some sort of reparation for the theft.

Two cultures, two languages. Even with those barriers, the mediator succeeded in bringing about a mutual understanding and a peaceful solution.

As I read that on what would have been Ryo Kiyan’s 52^nd birthday, I remembered his own idea that the issue between him and Miss M (see earlier posts), which ultimately led to his suicide, could have been settled with a simple mediation session. Those were his words, “a simple mediation session.”

Later, when I mentioned this concept to others, some were horrified at the thought of forcing poor, frightened Miss M into the same room with her nemesis.

Who said anything about forcing? It never occurred to me that anyone would think that. Needless to say (or perhaps not so needless), such a session is entirely voluntary. Mediation cannot take place if either party is coerced. Presumably both sides would agree that talking things out through a skilled mediator could help them settle their dispute to mutual satisfaction.

This was something Ryo suggested privately, not to the powers in the Sullivan County government who prosecuted him. Being lawyers and bureaucrats, they did it the bureaucratic way, which meant holding a formal hearing at which no witnesses were called for his side and he was not permitted to speak for himself, only to answer questions. Even Michael Sussman, the attorney he hired to defend him, did nothing to bring up the Asperger issue which, in the long run, was the crux of the problem. Aspie minds are organized differently from those of non-Aspies. They simply cannot see things the same way, and vice versa. And because they’ve been Aspies all their lives, they often don’t realize how different their worldview is from that of others. The same is true of those others. They can’t grasp how an Aspie sees things, or the size of the gulf between the two minds.

Ryo’s cousin, Sharleen, understood. Her actual words were, “His reality was different from the norm, but that was what made him unique.” She knew him well enough to appreciate those differences, rather than feel threatened by them, unlike Miss M and Sullivan County. A mediation session would have explained to Miss M that Ryo meant her no harm, that he only wanted answers. He didn’t think of himself as a danger. He thought they were friends, and knew his intentions were benign. It never entered his Aspie mind that she might have a different take on things.

Mediation would have made clear to him that she did have a different take, that his persistence frightened her to the point of carrying a knife and pepper spray for protection. It would have explained that the friendship he valued so highly was only a casual office acquaintance and to her, his constant insistence on dialog seemed more like stalking than talking. He learned the truth only at the hearing when it was too late to change anything.

In my last post I promised to talk about a piece I came across by an Aspie in which he describes what it’s like to have Asperger’s. My plans for that went awry when I read the article on mediation. It seemed so apt, I just had to get it in. Next time I will discuss the Aspie story.

 

Lack of Understanding

Again it’s been many weeks since I last posted. My excuse this time is that I was occupied with finishing my latest wip (work in progress), the third novel in my young adult Revenger series.

 I never set out to write a series. But when I planned a sequel to Twenty Minutes Late, the publisher suggested a series might be the way to go. Both Twenty Minutes and this blog were inspired by the same event, that is, what happened to Ryo Kiyan, which resulted from a widespread ignorance of Asperger’s Syndrome and the prejudice engendered by that ignorance. I gave the syndrome to my hero, Ben Canfield. A novel needed more than that, so I added a mystery-suspense plot. That became the core of the book, as has been true of all its sequels.

Twenty Minutes was written in the third person with several different viewpoints, including Ben’s. He has two or three chapters that show his feelings about what’s happening to him.

The next two books are written in first person. In the latest, Under Cover, I discuss those previous events in retrospect. My heroine, Cree, who has become Ben’s girlfriend, muses on how it was for Ben:

Aspies often have a problem with social connections. For some reason, their neurological set-up makes it hard for them to understand how those things work. In his junior year Ben got to be friends with a girl who shared a lot of his interests. He must have thought he found his soul mate. After a while he got up the nerve to ask her out, something he’d never done before with any girl. When she refused and started avoiding him, he thought he must have done something horribly wrong. He kept trying to find out what it was and apologize. She, the neurotic bitch, accused him of stalking and got him in real trouble.

 

Ben? Stalking? He might have come on a bit strong, but he thought they were friends and never dreamed she’d see him as a danger. It’s tough being an Aspie, with people thinking the worst of you. They always seem to.

The school bigwigs were too dumb to know that his persistence was part of the Asperger’s, that he had no malicious intent whatsoever. They held all sorts of hearings and were getting ready to expel him. Before they actually did, Ben transferred to Southbridge High.

That’s a big chunk for a quote, but it’s my book so I don’t think I’m infringing on anyone’s copyright. What happened to Ryo happened in the workplace. Since this series is for young adults, my characters are all teenagers and the events take place in school. The basic problem is the same as it was in real life. In the first book, Twenty Minutes, we see it happening as it happens.

Ben is a recurring character in the series, as are several others. Only in the second book, Long Sleep, did I refrain from dwelling on his Asperger’s, although I believe I mentioned it. I’ve tried to show how it affects him, how he copes with it, and how others view him, some with affection and understanding, others not. In Long Sleep there is more of an emphasis on sociopaths. People of that ilk make another appearance in Under Cover. They will also figure in the book I’m starting now, with the tentative title of Blackout. Even so, Ben and his Asperger’s will play an important role, for the simple reason that my main purpose is an attempt to bring about a better understanding of that syndrome. I firmly believe that if the people in Ryo Kiyan’s workplace had known something about Asperger’s, his fate might have been entirely different.

Next time I’ll discuss a post I came across by an Aspie who tells us what it’s like to have Asperger’s. (Hint: it’s rough.) I wish I could reproduce the whole thing but there are rules about that. I can only give you the link, which I will.

A Web Site

Recently a friend steered me to a Facebook page with the title ASPERGER SYNDROME AWARENESS. Of course I was already aware of Asperger Syndrome, but this site spelled out many things very clearly. I found it fascinating.

It’s a place where Aspies and their friends and relatives can ask questions, find answers and other information, or simply post comments. New material is added every day. Along with the posts are “posters” that are informative and in many cases inspirational.

The posters offer such messages as:  Awareness leads to understanding      Understanding leads to acceptance      Keep moving forward. That was by Stuart Duncan.

Another was a quotation from Dr. Temple Grandin: “Different . . . not less.” She should know.

And from Autism Spectrum Disorder: “I thought I would have to teach my child about the world. It turns out I have to teach the world about my child.” How true.

Another poster reads: “Autism: Don’t assume you know what it is because it probably isn’t what you think.”

Yet another enumerates “10 Amazing Life Lessons You Can Learn from Albert Einstein.” I won’t list them here but one of them had to do with Focus. It is well known that Aspies have an extraordinary ability to focus on details that aren’t apparent to other people. This makes them especially valuable for handling certain types of endeavor.

According to this site, the best Asperger book ever is THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO ASPERGER SYNDROME by Tony Atwood. He is perhaps the world’s most renowned expert on Asperger’s.

Another highly recommended read is RAISING MARTIANS FROM CRASH-LANDING TO LEAVING HOME: HOW TO HELP A CHILD WITH ASPERGER’S SYNDROME OR HIGH FUNCTIONING AUTISM by John Muggleton.

If the title seems cute and fanciful, it is an honest reflection of how truly different Aspies are from “regular” persons, or NTs (neurotypicals). Many people have trouble grasping the depth of that difference. Since Aspies look like everyone else, people expect them to be like everyone else and to understand how the rest of us think. That’s too much to ask. An Aspie can’t put himself in your shoes any more than you can put yourself in his.

The second time I looked at that site, someone had posted a video that tried to show the difference between Aspies and others. The first half of it was a walk down the sidewalk by a neurotypical. With buildings on one side and parked cars on the other, the scenery was so ordinary that one didn’t even think about it.

Then suddenly we transition to how an Aspie would experience the same walk. The first thing you notice is the intense brightness. That’s because many Aspies are sensitive to light. It’s part of their sensory overload. That overload goes for other senses as well, such as smells and loud noises. The video gives us a jumble of sounds all mushed together. An Aspie has trouble filtering out what’s relevant, and can be quite overwhelmed by the cacophony.

And don’t forget fluorescent lights. Most neurotypicals aren’t even aware that they flicker. For many Aspies, that flickering can be painful. Another thing the video points out is all the little details, such as a discarded cigarette butt, that can prove distracting to an Aspie, but which an NT wouldn’t notice.

Some of the posts ask for, or offer, help with frequent Aspie problems, especially the social ones. A parent wrote about what a joy her two daughters are, adding, “But like many Aspies [they] struggle with friendships.”

Another reads: “I have Asperger’s and it’s tough . . . I have trouble picking up on social cues and I take things very personally, whenever I go to parties. I feel like I don’t belong. If I didn’t have Asperger’s I wouldn’t be the great drummer that I am, but I could pick up social cues and start actually getting a girlfriend. With Asperger’s I’m a great musician but lousy at parties.”

And yet another: “I love this page and support it wholeheartedly. I have a brother with autism and the ignorance surrounding autism is astounding.”

That ignorance can cause huge problems. Aspies simply aren’t what other people expect them to be. As I began this blog, I referred to several Aspies who were fired from their jobs because they made other people “uncomfortable.” They’re just different. Those differences can often cause them to be bullied. In my novel TWENTY MINUTES LATE and its sequels, the Aspie hero, Ben Canfield, still bears scars on his arm from when he was pushed off his bike by bullies at the age of 11. Although fiction, that is not far-fetched.

In past posts I’ve mentioned Jesse Saperstein, the author of ATYPICAL: LIFE WITH ASPERGER’S IN 20⅓ CHAPTERS. Jesse says that, growing up, he was bullied all the time. Along with being told he would never amount to anything, would never have a girlfriend or be accepted and respected, he was informed that whatever abuse he suffered was self-inflicted.

According to statistics, 94% of children with a diagnosis of Asperger’s have, at one time or another, or in some cases all the time, faced bullying. Jesse talks about that in a video he made in which he discusses his own experience of being different from the norm. “People were scared of me,” he says. Indeed, people tend to be afraid of those who are different from what they’re used to. That reaction is known as xenophobia.

The video Jesse made is titled FREE-FALLING TO END BULLYING IN 2012. It’s on YouTube. While it probably didn’t end bullying completely—people do enjoy the sense of power they get from tormenting others—it’s a masterful film. Several autistic people are interviewed about their experience with bullies. One of them is Dr. Temple Grandin who asserts that “high school was absolutely the worst part of my life.”

Jesse contrasts the powerlessness of being bullied with the freedom of flying that comes from skydiving. He and several others jump out of a plane and float to earth. That freedom is symbolic of how life could and should be lived if only other people would cease their persecution.

One-Sided

Originally I meant this post to follow on the heels of the previous one, as something of an explanation. Various activities, such as income tax, got in the way. I have also been doing a final edit on my novel The Revengers, which was inspired by the case of Ryo Kiyan and the wall of misunderstanding between the world of Asperger’s syndrome and the neurotypical world.

It’s that wall and where it can lead that is the purpose of this blog and also of the novel. In the latter, Ben’s eagerness for friendship leads him to press too hard on Kelsey Fritz, who perceives that pressure as stalking, and consequently is terrified. Ben sees her terror as a misunderstanding of his intention, when all he wants is to make sure she understands that he has no evil intentions. And so it goes, spiraling into near-tragedy.

That is exactly what happened between Ryo and Miss Mall, although in that case the tragedy actually occurred. Miss Mall’s terror led to events that in the end caused Ryo to take his own life.

As I wrote the last post, I realized that the whole blog may strike readers as one-sided. Blogs, like most written material, are supposed to have a point of view. I did try to be broad-minded and see things from the other side, but this was difficult for two reasons: 1) I had no access to the other side, except to hear it spelled in dry legalese during four days of hearings, and 2) Ryo was living with me at the time, so I could follow all that happened from his point of view and how he felt about it. I could only try to imagine Miss Mall’s feeling of being stalked, although my own reaction would have been annoyance rather than terror. As I mentioned before, Miss Mall testified that she took to carrying a knife and pepper spray, and noting where he left his car before she would venture into the parking lot.

Ryo himself felt bad that Miss Mall was so frightened. Certainly he never meant to produce that effect. He only wanted to talk things over. Since they had been friends, he assumed she knew him well enough to understand that. Obviously she didn’t. Nor could he, being an Aspie, understand what was going on in her mind. Because Sullivan County chose to ignore the fact that he had Asperger’s syndrome, and/or was totally oblivious as to how it can affect a person’s thinking and perception, the ultimate result for Ryo, and for me, as his mother, was heartbreak.

Yes, it’s true that he took his own life. It was his decision. It’s also true that very few people make that decision lightly. He felt he had no future. He felt that the world was a rotten place and he just didn’t fit in. Although the events unfolded gradually, their outcome was a special shock because, after forty-plus years, he thought his life was finally coming together and making sense. He had a job he really enjoyed, and he had friends, especially one who seemed as compatible as Miss Mall.

Many Aspies I know have contemplated suicide—because they feel they don’t fit in. But there is room for them in this world, they have much to contribute, and it’s my hope that eventually more neurotypicals will come to understand that. As a character in The Revengers points out, “Just because a person is different doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with him.”

Author Inspiration

It’s a while since I last posted, due to having been incarcerated with a fractured hip. Now I am home, getting around in a wheelchair, and besieged by an army of well-meaning ladies, the home health team.

If that sounds resentful, it’s because I am—not of them, they are all very nice, but of my condition. As I explained to my daughter, what I resent is needing to be helped, not the helpers themselves.

That was the theme of one of my early young adult novels, Don’t Look at Me that Way, which is now out of print. It was inspired by something that happened to a family friend. She had taken under her wing an underprivileged youth who seemed to have much potential. He won her heart to the extent that she planned to give him an old car she had no more use for. Before the transfer could be made, he stole it.

Over and over again, she lamented, “I was going to give him the car.” She hadn’t a clue why he would do such a thing. Nor had I. I had never even met the young man, but for my purposes, his reason was unimportant. In writerly fashion, I said to myself, “If I had done a thing like that, why would I have done it?”

And there was my story. The protagonist of Don’t Look at Me that Way is nineteen-year-old Rosa, of Puerto Rican descent, who lives with her mother and multiple siblings in a crowded New York City tenement. Rosa, bright and capable, is hired as an au pair for a well-heeled woman, Mrs. Pritchard, who has two young children, a well-paid husband, a cleaning woman, and no outside job. Rosa can’t believe how someone with such an easy life could feel so burdened that she needs a mother’s helper. As the Pritchards vacation on Long Island Sound, Rosa meets a young man who teaches her the rudiments of driving.

You guessed it. Mrs. Pritchard plans to give Rosa an old car she doesn’t want any more. No sooner are they back in the city than Rosa’s mother dies, leaving her with a batch of younger siblings, one of whom is in trouble with the police. It’s the story of her life, but not of her benefactress’s life. In anger and agony, Rosa steals the car and leaves it in a slummy section of Manhattan.

True, it was a pointless, unproductive thing for her to do. A purely emotional reaction. People of my mother’s generation, full of social conscience without knowing anything but privilege, couldn’t understand it at all, and questioned the sense of my novel. Nevertheless, it resonated with others and received a commendation from the Council on Interracial Books for Children. The book has a satisfactory, if not fairytale, ending. I don’t remember exactly how I worked it, the thing was written it so long ago. I do recall that Rosa has a loyal boyfriend, Julio, who delivers groceries, plans to marry her, and help her raise those siblings.

A question frequently asked of fiction authors is, “Where do you get your ideas?” The usual answer is, “Ideas are everywhere.”

And they are. When I began this blog I mentioned that I was writing a young adult novel inspired by what happened to Ryo Kiyan. I couldn’t not write it because I want people to understand about Asperger’s Syndrome. The setting is changed from an office to a school. And whereas I will never know what made the real Miss M so afraid that she took to carrying a knife, I’ve provided an answer for my characters. I’ve also added a mystery, with the Aspie in trouble as a parallel plot. The two will converge at the end.

We’ll have more about this in the next post.

Oh, the Terror of It All

A few days ago my daughter brought home a long-time friend, named Craig. There was obviously something different about him. He talked in a monotone and was stiffly polite. He also remembered having met me at my daughter’s wedding eleven years ago.

I thought she must have mentioned it to him: “You met my mom, etc. . .” It turns out she hadn’t. He remembered me and everyone else who was there. I’m told he probably remembered what color clothes they had on, and other details as well.

Do you recall the scene in Rainman when Dustin Hoffman sees a pile of toothpicks on the floor and can tell at a glance how many are in that pile? His character, Raymond, was what is known as an autistic savant. Raymond’s brain worked in ways that a neurotypical person (NT) can’t begin to imagine. How do such people see things? How do they process what they see?

At one time, Raymond would have been labeled an “idiot savant.” You can forget the “idiot.” It’s true, he would have had trouble living on his own and doing many of the things a typical person can do. But in exchange, he could do many things an NT can’t do. Rather than deficient, Raymond was—well, different. In his book The Myriad Gifts of Asperger’s Syndrome, John M. Ortiz, Ph.D., an expert in the field, cites examples similar to, and some even more extraordinary, than the fictional one in the movie.

Dr. Hans Asperger, whose name was given to the syndrome, recognized that those gifts could be of value to the rest of society, if people would get past their prejudices and realize that there is nothing wrong with being different. The only thing that makes neurotypicals “typical” is that they are in the majority. What if it were the other way around?

Because of that prejudice, James Ryo Kiyan, a cartographer with Sullivan County’s Division of Planning and the protagonist of this blog, lost his entire future. It was a promising future and his work was often praised. Still, he had a few peculiarities that made a young woman “uncomfortable.” What was worse, he failed to understand that his persistence in trying to make peace with her only exacerbated that discomfort.

Her feeling seems to have arisen when Ryo had the nerve to look at the books in her apartment, a rather idle activity that he considered natural and normal. She, apparently, did not, and said herself that it made her “uncomfortable.” Thus began the downturn in what Ryo saw as a pleasant friendship. In his anguished determination to have her think well of him, as an Aspie he failed to understand her point of view. And so, instead of healing the breach, he only dug himself into a hole from which there was no recovery. One might argue that he did it to himself. That would be ignoring the fact of his Asperger’s and the entirely different perception that goes with it. It was his feeling at the time that the county wanted to be rid of him simply because he was an oddball.

What followed might have been avoided if someone had had the wits and compassion to get Ryo and Miss M together and help bring about a mutual understanding. That would have eased Miss M’s fears, saved a man with much potential from utter destruction, and also saved the county considerable expense. But the bureaucratic mentality superseded common sense and the juggernaut rolled on.

Aside from ignorance, prejudice, and a basic lack of creative thinking, another factor in the case of Sullivan County vs. James Ryo Kiyan may have been Miss M’s family connections within the county’s law enforcement structure. Her father was a retired state trooper and a good friend of the county sheriff.

Then, too—and this is only a guess—something may have been going on with Miss M herself, something that wasn’t supposed to be made public. Several things led me to wonder about this. I never did learn the reason why defense attorney Michael Sussman declined to submit Ryo’s diagnosis of Asperger’s to the person who was scheduled to hear the case against him. What was the point in going through all those tests and interviews—which cost Ryo a bundle—if the results were not to be used?

I was startled when, at a session of the hearing, Miss M revealed that in her terror at Ryo’s persistence, she had taken to carrying a knife and pepper spray. As I recall, she said it under oath. When we broke for lunch that day, I asked Sussman, “I thought it was illegal to carry a concealed weapon. Or does that only mean firearms?”

He made a shushing motion with both hands, as if I had said something compromising. No one else was in earshot except for Ryo and a few totally uninterested Chinese waiters. So why, I wondered, the shushing? It was his only response. I never did get an answer and couldn’t help developing my own theory, based partly on the fact that Sussman and the Sullivan County attorney were friends. It seemed like a kind of coverup. From the beginning, my family had wondered at Miss M’s extreme reaction. I remember someone saying, “They may know something about her.”

Apparently the discomfort began when he looked at the books on her shelf. That discomfort caused her to turn away from him, which caused him to try to mend whatever rift there was, which caused the rift to grow wider, and so it went, right up to his suspension in May of 2009. (See earlier posts for more details.)

The hearing took place at the end of August and ran into early September. Finally, in December of that year, the hearing officer, Lynda Levine, Esq., was ready with her recommendation.